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Before the Agorà. A Model for Understanding Public Space in the ancient Near East.
No full textThis paper discusses the civic importance of urban squares in the cities of the Levant and the Near East before the development of the Greek polis. It is generally assumed that, in most ancient cities of Western Asia (“Oriental cities”), urban squares did not play any significant role in urban design. Based on the case-study of the Eastern Mediterranean city of Ugarit in the 13th century BCE, this paper argue for the contrary and set forward a streamlined, integrated and GIS-based procedure to infer urban behaviour in public spaces from an ancient city plan. This methodology may be of use for all those working within historical frameworks where written and visual sources are scarce or absent
Five drums at Carchemish: An Unrecognized Iron Age Burial along the Herald's Wall?
No full textThe present paper deals with the so-called “Herald’s Wall” at Iron Age Carchemish. It is argued that a stone installation at its middle may be the covering of a hitherto unrecognised grave. If this should be the case, it would confer on the wall and the whole ceremonial centre of the ancient City an unsuspected layer of meaning and be an important factor for the understanding of the cult of ancestors in Iron-Age Syro-Anatolia. First, an analysis of the Herald’s Wall and of the circumstances of its excavation is given (§1). There follows a discussion of the re-use of sculptured slabs and of its consequences for a correct interpretation of the installation in question (§2). Then, a cist grave at the related site of Zincirli is set forth as a comparison (§3). Finally, the evidence for intramural burials and the ancestor cult in Carchemish is called upon (§4)
Death, Amusement and the City: Civic Spectacles and the Theatre Palace of Kapara, King of Gūzāna
Get PDFAt Gūzāna, Northern Syria, King Kapara built around 900 BC an enigmatic edifice
that towered over the ceremonial city centre. The “Palace of Kapara” had strong ritual
connotations, but its exact function has remained unclear until the present day. In this paper, I
discuss the possibility that Kapara’s building functioned as a “theatre palace”, a theatrical
space reminiscent of a palace but essentially used as a backdrop for extraordinary civic
spectacles with a substantial audience. The art and ritual installations found on site suggest
that these festivals revolved around a highly choreographed cult of the royal ancestors staged
by the royal elite to reinforce social consensus. I also propose to identify the tomb of Kapara with a crypt excavated in front of the "theatre palace"
Warfare techniques in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia
No full textThe Early Dynastic Period in Mesopotamia can function as a sort of experimental laboratory to study the early development of state-controlled warfare. This paper approaches the topic from the point of view of tecnical and tactical achievments in three different warfare types, all of them equally new to the period: the battle on wheels, the phalanx attack, and the siege warfare
Review of H. Çambel and A. Özyar, Karatepe/Aslantaş. Azatiwataya. Die Bildwerke. Mainz 2003.
No full textReview of R.-B. Wartke, Sama’al. Ein aramäischer Stadtstaat des 10. Bis 8. Jhs. v. Chr und die Geschichte seiner Erforschung. Mainz: von Zabern 2005
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Urban squares in Late Bronze Age Ugarit: A street view on ancient Near Eastern governance
Get PDFThis paper interprets ancient public space as a material correlate of civic communities, using the Late Bronze Age city of Ugarit as a case-study. Civic communities acted as significant political factor throughout the history of the ancient Near East, both as institutions (e.g., political assemblies) and as informal groups (the “town's crowd”). A growing body of evidence and innovative approaches shows that, particularly in the Upper Syrian Euphrates region of the Late Bronze Age (cf. above all Tell Bazi and Emar), these forms of social aggregation and political negotiation were influential and sometimes antagonistic alternatives to monarchical powers. In this paper, I approach the study of past communal political life by analyzing with an integrated, GIS-based methodology the planning and use of public squares at Ugarit. The contribution aims at highlighting the relevance of public space for understanding the balance of power in the cities of the Late Bronze Age and discussing the chances and limits of relating civic politics to specific features of the ancient urban design
Review of J. Cheng and M. H. Feldman, Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students. Brill, 2007.
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