Volume 3, Issue 1 -

The permanent marking of human bodies by branding and tattooing was practiced throughout the entire three millennia of the cuneiform record. Brands and tattoos were inflicted on slaves as a means of either marking human or divine ownership, or as a method of punishment for slaves who had already run away. This practice was surprisingly consistent; cuneiform tablets from the early third millennium list branded persons and animals owned by the temple household, while documents from the Achaemenid period detail legal disputes involving marked slaves. As the Near Eastern economy became increasingly international, slaves were marked in multiple languages ensuring the maintenance of social order across a broad geographical scope. Mesopotamian branding and tattoo practices had long-lasting consequences; the Greeks and Romans adopted the custom, the Egyptians began to mark prisoners of war, and the Bible prohibits skin marking in certain contexts. This essay provides a broad overview of the textual evidence for branding and tattooing throughout Ancient Mesopotamian history, placing it within the context of a civilization in which writing on natural bodies – animate or otherwise – was profoundly meaningful.

Despite the frequency of rebellions against the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib, very few events in his annals are described as such. Instead rebels are often described as having never submitted to Sennacherib before. This reluctance to write about rebellion is unusual in Assyrian inscriptions, but has not been commented upon in the previous scholarship. This study investigates the reasons for this peculiarity of Sennacherib’s inscriptions. It is argued that the description of rebels in this fashion was intended to draw attention away from the connection between these events and the death of Sennacherib’s father, Sargon II. A second instance of a death in Sennacherib’s family affecting the content of his inscriptions is also identified. His son Aššur-nādin-šumi’s death followed a pair of campaigns to the borders of Tabal, the location of Sargon’s death. Because of this it was viewed as a “punishment” for undertaking these campaigns to regions tainted by association with Sargon. After his death, Aššur-nādin-šumi is never mentioned in the same inscription as these campaigns. Although Sennacherib generally avoids mentioning rebellion, overcoming such events was an important facet of Assyrian royal ideology. Because of this, events in some ideologically or historically significant regions are explicitly stated to be rebellions in the annals. Sennacherib’s inscriptions therefore demonstrate, perhaps better than those of any other Assyrian king, the two sides of rebellion’s ideological importance as both an obstacle overcome by a heroic king, and as a punishment for a poor one. His attempts to obscure some occurrences of rebellion demonstrate a fear of the more negative ideological aspect of rebellion which is not usually present in the inscriptions of other kings. This provides new insight into the factors which influenced the composition of Sennacherib’s inscriptions.

This article makes the case for an Egyptian connection in the Neo-Assyrian tablet VAT 10057, commonly known as the Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince. It opens with a discussion of past work on this tablet, a synopsis of the text, and a survey of the evidence for Egyptian people and culture in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It then proceeds to analyse specific lines of the composition which may reveal signs of what is termed “Egyptianising” influence. One description in particular, featuring a god standing atop a crocodile, is highlighted as especially convincing on the basis of a very close match with contemporary Egyptian iconography of the god Horus. In the light of this principal evidence, other possible but less definitive examples are put forward. The article also discusses the nature of the “Egyptianising” elements, assessing the possibilities of both purely descriptive and conceptual connections with Egyptian culture, and what this might indicate about the people behind the text. The “Egyptianising” elements are also located in the broader context of the composition, and their place in a complex Mesopotamian text also incorporating some Elamite elements is considered. Overall, the article aims to demonstrate that some sort of Egyptian connection was present, although it concedes that its scale and nature are perhaps impossible to gauge. It is hoped that this piece will encourage other scholars to pursue connections between Egypt and Assyria with renewed vigour, demonstrating that textual analysis may prove fruitful in this area.

The formation and perpetuation of intellectual canons – as consensually agreed upon corpora considered most significant and representative of a time, place or person – rely heavily on closed systems of knowledge. The bound-paper book exemplifies such a closed system and has been a primary form of constructing and disseminating canons of ancient works. The Internet, however, challenges the very structuring principles of knowledge production inherent in books, offering potentially boundless networks of unorchestrated knowledge bits. As scholars, teachers, and students turn more to the Internet for publication, research, and learning, sharply defined canons face disruption. This article analyzes some of the structuring principles of knowledge production and dissemination in the specific case of ancient Near Eastern art, first considering traditional book-based textbooks. These textbooks follow a model of linear temporal development that unfolds from the first to the last page. It then explores the academic trend toward edited, multi-authored compendia as a concurrent development with the open-ended, networked structure of the Internet. Both vehicles of knowledge production offer more diverse sets of works and multivocality; the Internet in particular permits a radical break from authored and edited narratives. Last, the article considers some of the possibilities, as well as limitations, inherent in the Internet, presenting several existing Internet-based platforms with a specific focus on pedogogy, in order to consider the implications and consequences for knowledge production and dissemination in the Digital Age.