Topography of Remembrance, collective memory in Mesopotamia, by Gerdien Jonker
Centralisation was the motive for remembering, and the object of memory transactions ...
Gerdien Jonker wrote:
Introduction
Simultaneously with the introduction of writing in Mesopotamia, shortly before the beginning of the third millennium, names were classified in lists and written down-names of objects such as cooking utensils and textiles, people and occupations, domestic animals and wild animals, plants, birds, fish, towns and regions. At this time, writing was mostly limited to the production of administrative documents.These lists served as subject matter for the education of scribes. They were arranged according to meaning or spelling and the system of notation made the compilation of even longer lists possible. In this way, a systematic classification of all nouns gradually developed from a teaching aid for scribes.
Around the middle of the third millennium, a fully developed lexical tradition of great uniformity had come into existence. However, not everything that concerned normal “speaking" — narratives, explanation and commentary — were put into writing. The first (short) inscriptions on objects offered to the gods were composed around 2600 BC, complete with the writers' own names. Between 2400 and 2000 BC, the making and copying of lists decreased drastically: in Mesopotamia itself, hardly any more were produced. On the other hand the practice was developed of writing one's own name on votive offerings and presenting them to the gods with an inscription. Only at the dawn of the second millennium was the word-list tradition accepted and radically extended, from then on personal names also being systematically collected in lists for the first time.
In the course of the Old Babylonian period, in the first half of the second millennium, a new interpretation was given to the past. This period constituted a break from the former period in more than one respect. In the preceding centuries the population had changed fundamentally in composition through infiltration and acculturation from the West by mainly Amorite-speaking groups. The official written language became Akkadian, an Eastern Semitic language which had been the language of the northern part of Babylonia ("Akkad") in the previous millennium. The official written language, Sumerian, appeared to be declining into a dead language. The image of the past that was reconstructed at that time from written documents from the third millennium would become the central focus of the memory of all subsequent Assyrian and Babylonian societies.
Personal "names" of people played an important role in this process. The first lists of individuals along with all their family relations, the so-called genealogies, came into existence. The king and the head of the family kept memory alive on behalf of the groups associated with them. The names and the stories connected with them which a king wished to remember in common with the names which he "invoked" determined the public image of Old Babylonian society. The sovereign had a system of writers and scholars at his command to assist him, who moulded the desired memory into a permanent written form and saw to it that it was handed down. The names which the head of a family "invoked" formed the basis of that family's prestige and self-image. Within the context of the family, securing something in written form played hardly any role; memory was transferred orally.
These different forms of transference, written and oral, resulted in a common image of the past, which we shall refer to from now on as the “collective memory of Mesopotamia”. …
A Provisional Definition of Memory
Why do people take such a deep interest in their past? Have all human groups, past and present, always been interested in what is irrevocably over? Is this unavoidably tied up in human actions? Has interest in "the past" the same implications as the process of “remembering"? What place does "historiography" have in the process of remembering?
Where does "tradition" fit in, or "convention", or “national commemoration"? The response to all these questions, which at first sight appear diverse, has come increasingly from the point of view of the cognitive process.
The most recent definition of the cognitive process [suggests] that it belongs to the category of inherent human activity, valid for all people of whatever period. According to [some researchers] … it is a mechanism in which sensory perception (“receiving signals”), remembering (“comparison with already received signals”) and making deductions (“attaching meaning”) are indissolubly linked, with the result that they can no longer be studied in isolation from one other. The cognitive process makes "an interest in the past" a compelling necessity, a conditio sine qua non for attaining perception in the present.
The great advantage of such a definition of the "act of memory" is its universality. Only through the association of a particular “signal" with an "earlier signal" is interpretation possible. Every human being, whatever the circumstances and period, has to take these steps in order to achieve recognition. The steps themselves are not precisely laid down, but are determined by choices, and the results can vary immensely. Using this minimal formulae, the different stages of the cognitive process may be projected on to the processes which take place in individuals as well as in groups. Here the definition of “memory" is provisionally accepted, without claiming thereby to have solved all problems of definition.
Defining memory raises a number of questions. One concerns the activity rather than the passivity of the cognitive process. Do memories come to our assistance actively or passively? What subject matter is recalled after an active or passive interaction with memory? Only then can the second question, whether and how groups remember, be answered. As will become clear later, everything hinges on how these two questions are answered, namely the description of the processes which together depend on society, "tradition", "national commemoration” and, last but not least, “historiography”. ..
… In the cultural memory, it is not facts that count but only history as it is remembered: "facts" are transformed into "myths''. The communicative memory, on the other hand, preserves memories of the recent past. It is a memory reservoir which originates and perishes with its bearers, that is, its =content includes people and events that the ones who remember have known and with which they have interacted. With the death of the bearers, the content of the memory moves up a generation, and older names and narratives are forgotten. The tension between cultural and communicative memory, which in Mesopotamia meant a tension between central power and personal experience, found shape in the tension between the written and oral tradition. In the Old Babylonian period the cultural memory was represented by the written word. Here transition was effected by means of reading and writing and was concentrated on central institutions (the "scribal schools"). In the communicative memory the transition took place with the help of ritual acts, centered around commemoration ceremonies which were celebrated at home.
Chapter 1
… In Babylonian the name Sargon means "the true king". National unity was built up under him for the first time in the history of southern Mesopotamia. Sargon and his successors waged war on a large scale involving large tracts of territory and countless numbers of people. The result of these military actions was the provision of the raw materials with which the city of Akkad was built and made the centre of a great empire. A central monarchy was now established where previously religious and military hegemony had been diversified among the different city-states and their surrounding territories. By broadening the concept of monarchy in this way the rulers of Akkad began to acquire god-like characteristics, which assumed proportions of mythical significance in the memories of succeeding generations. What actually happened was not decisive in this process: what was decisive was the reality of the memory and the dynamic effect this had on different successors. In constructing the social memory of the Akkadian empire the starting point for a new mythology was provided. The pursuit of political unity and dominance over neighbouring lands predominated in the process of selection, this being the setting in which all succeeding generations were to see themselves. …
… The process of the Akkad orientation began early. Before the past was completely dominated by recollections of the kings of Akkad, there was a different emphasis which for a long time did not "fit in” with later ideas of the first establishment of political unity. We can see this emphasis in the song known as "The curse of Akkad". In this text, the heroes are shown in the typical third millennium setting of a single self-governing city. A few centuries later, at the beginning of the second millennium, this political form of organization finally gave way to a centrally administered political structure. The story would then disappear from the social memory.
One other concrete locus had been left behind to act as a reminder of the actual fall of the empire of Akkad. The barely inhabited ruin that was once Akkad must have stood as sign on the landscape, a sign of the contrast between divine omnipotence and human fallibility. These were the remains, visible for all to see, that would first give rise to the literature of memory. A lament on the devastation of Akkad was composed using a literary form which gave prominence to the decline in fortune of the Sumerian cities. …
This song enjoyed great popularity. for a few hundred years. 144 copies of it existed in the third dynasty of Ur and the Old Babylonian period, after which it disappeared from the written tradition and thus from the cultural memory. The former type of political administration had long since given way to the notion of a centralized political unity. The one epic poem that had been inspired by the fortunes of Akkad was the collective drama of a single city, but because the change in political administration meant that in reality there was no room in the memory of the old city collective, it was bound to disappear.
The story of "The curse of Akkad" suited the sense of justice of the third dynasty of Ur and belonged to what, in its view, was a “fitting" interpretation of the past. In the story, Ur-Nammu's destruction of the ekur was transferred to Naram-Sin. The slow decline of the centralized power under Sar-kali-sarri was integrated into the narrative of dramatic collapse. The "foreign" Gutians were cast in the role of "hordes", though they had grown used to living in southern Mesopotamia over the past few hundred years. They were shown as coming down from the mountains, that is, from outside their "own" world, to invade the town and bring about its destruction. …
… The "Akkad orientation" also involved the delineation of the collective memory in time. Sargon and his successors had introduced a central form of kingship for the first time. Subsequent generations had transformed the Akkad period into one of mythical significance and did not think of looking back beyond it. Events began to be rewritten under the third dynasty of Ur, from which time Sargon was portrayed as "the true king", while Naram-Sin, by contrast, was seen as the king who went too far.
These societies continued successively to form a meaningful context into which the memories of Akkad could be integrated. The chief moment of memory became the centralization of the administration and the military supremacy of Akkad. …
… From the material that has been discussed so far, it is possible to establish that it was the idea of a central monarchy and the unifying of the city states into one nation that increasingly guided the selection process. In the scribal schools of the third millennium, records were still being made of the songs of the kings, but only those of their own dynasty. In the temples, memories were still cherished of those who had played a role in public life. Only the decline of the city could lead to the decline of the cultural memory that had hitherto been retained.
But in the Old Babylonian period, only those episodes which were relevant for the central monarchy were recorded. Those who had not contributed to the formation of the state, and they were many in number, were simply ignored. …
Chapter 2
… In the third millennium, most of the citizens of a town had access to the communicative media. The selection process did not run along the fracture lines of family lineage, nor was it defined by a strong centralist authority. The collection of objects and of corresponding texts clearly shows us that both men and women, whether pictured together or each with their own effigy, were present in the temple. Those who had fulfilled their cultic and worldly functions, whose name had been connected with a deity and who had gained a place in the “memory" had claims to “care”. ..
… How the vestiges of the past were valued and interpreted thereafter and what paths people took in managing their inheritance are questions which will be central to the following chapters. The attraction exerted by the idea of a centralist monarchy determined the choice. This choice was facilitated by an increasing concentration on the written word. By separating the text from its bearer, writing was permanently freed from its original religious context. The practice of making copies in fact meant a reduction to one single medium, writing, introduced five hundred years earlier to decorate and expand an already existing communicative pattern. This cleared the way for the hero worship which the Akkad rulers were to receive.
Chapter 3
[The word na.ru.a = naru means literally "an erected stone”. This name was given to the stones which marked the boundaries of estates and to monuments which stood in temple courtyards.]
… For later generations, landscape came to seem too transitory as a bearer of memory. Canals could silt up; meadows could revert to desert. People looked for more lasting means of guaranteeing tradition, ones which could withstand the ravages of time. One was the symbolic use of the naru building inscriptions, thus associating the durability of "names" with the durability of buildings. The Gilgames saga was to be embedded into the naru framework thus allowing the memory of his name to be merged with the foundations of his city, Uruk. The memory material concerning the heroes of Akkad consisted of speculation about the borders of the land and gradually merged into the matrix of centralism.
Symbolizing the naru made it possible to connect the tradition of something as fleeting as a name with the implementation of a written form. To preserve the immaterial name, which is after all only a pattern of sounds which people utter in their mouths, it was necessary to connect it in the imagination with an inscribed object belonging to an imaginary place. This concept was attached to the buildings which previous generations had set up and also to building inscriptions concealed in their foundations. A new memory image had been found, whose advantages were legion. Fixing the concept in writing took the place of a concrete object. Greater flexibility was thus possible and people were better able to direct the process of choosing from the desired tradition. The central position which writing came to occupy was the most important driving force behind these new developments.
Between 2100 and 1800, the names that had been carried along on the stream of time were submitted to a process of reselection which was dominated by the idea of centralization. A literary genre developed in which the legendary heroes of the past were made to "speak" in order to emphasize the importance of maintaining the tradition based on them. The purpose was to create a continuity with the past within which the name of each new ruler could find its place. The heroes of Akkad were especially prominent in their role as “speakers", their "voices from the past" reaching those living in the Old Babylonian period in the form of tablets which were claimed to be authentic copies of their original inscriptions. …
… It could be that the ultimate fate of someone like Ur-Nammu was the catalyst for the preservation of his memory. It was the responsibility of the gods to secure such a destiny, but it was the responsibility of human descendants actively to propagate that memory by evoking the names of their ancestors and predecessors. The generations that followed Ur-Nammu around 2100, attached different consequences to this division of roles. The "evocation of names" as a memorial formed an important aspect of their social and political activity. Sulgi, the son of Ur-Nammu, had songs brought back into circulation "which were no longer in use" and, no doubt prompted by the fear that his own name may perish in oblivion, gave commands to multiply and extend his songs. His expectation was that "in days far-off' they would be read again as a "message for the future".
Later generations, however, showed no interest in remembering everybody who had left a memory behind. Only those who represented the notion of centralisation became the object of a memory transaction. Su-Sin, Sulgi's son and successor, called himself "the king of Sumer and Akkad" and travelled to Mari to bring offerings to Sargon and Naram-Sin. There lies an important element of choice in this action.
Chapter 4
… The hymns of UrNammu and Sulgi were copied at this time but provided no basis for any new constructions of memory. It was only the correspondence bequeathed by Sulgi that became the starting point for a construction of the past which accords more with the picture of conquest presented by the copies. The way in which the last two kings of the third dynasty of Ur provided information about themselves clearly corresponds with the picture of the Akkadian rulers formed by popular impressions.
The content of these copies is limited. Their aim is to lay a claim to the world and to describe its size. In fact there are two stereotypes. In the first, the central concern is with the conquest and appropriation of foreign lands; in the second, the theme is rebellion and its legitimate suppression. This is how the first two kings of Akkad, Sargon and Rimus, each received the title “conqueror of the world”. The last two, Manistusu and Naram-Sin, were assigned the role of holding together the kingdom inherited from their "father" and protecting it from betrayal and rebellion. Stories grew up around the first stereotype which were an elaboration of the biography of Sargon. A number of texts centre on the second stereotype, the “revolt of all the countries”, which have never previously been assembled for this purpose. They are renarrations of past events in the style of the naru literature, and the emphasis is again on legitimizing claims to world sovereignty and also defining its extent. Use was made of original inscriptions. The texts are presented here to illustrate how the original sources were utilized in portraying the heroes. …
… In these narratives of the "revolt" against Naram-Sin, what is really at issue is the recapitulation of trade routes as seen from the point of view of various centres of power. There is also a need for centres of power to reassert their own identity, expressed in the theme of continual building of temples and the establishment of regular tribute and offerings. These stories are not copies of original inscriptions but renarrations in the style of the naru literature. Alternatively they can be seen as interpretations of the idea of centralism that was held at the moment the texts were being written. Centralized power was preserved with reference to the achievements of Naram-Sin. In the “necessity" he experienced keeping the kingdom of Sargon together lies the legitimization of later leadership of his successors. The knowledge of geography which emanates from these texts seems to have been put together from experience, and completed with knowledge of the past, just as was the case with the "route description" and the "map of the world". Here too the existing state of affairs is inextricably bound up with the view of how it really ought to be.
Chapter 5
… [In] royal correspondence … practically all the exchanges, from those of Sulgi up to and including those of Lipit-Istar, are concerned with one and the same problem. The general theme is the threat to the old political establishment from the north-east comer of the kingdom, the region to the east of modem Baghdad. In this border region, a process of sedentarisation and acclimatisation had been taking place in the three hundred years prior to the establishment of the Old Babylonian empire. Here, on the edge of the known world, the tribes of the Amorites had begun to settle down, and within a few centuries a population which was still partly nomadic had become more settled. A complicated balance was the result.
The letters dealing with these historical facts went backwards and forwards between the military commanders who had to maintain and strengthen the defences along the border and the central government in the capital city, Ur (later Isin). They discuss building further defences in order to protect the borders against new waves of migrating Amorites. They also give warnings not to upset the delicate equilibrium which had been established in the area. In the letters to Ur the Amorites, who were kept to the mountain regions on the other side of the border, still posed a serious military threat. A hundred years later, in the Isin letters, they have become inhabitants of the border area, and various forms of inter-communication exist between them and the centre.
Epilogue
Identity needs memory to give shape to itself. On different occasions, it was established that the attraction of centralization formed an important motive for remembering. The idea of a centralized government over "all lands" was introduced by the rulers of Akkad. In Old Babylonian society, this persuaded the rulers of the successive Amorite kingdoms to reshape the past in such a way that the memory of these legendary rulers had ample space devoted to it. In order to obtain a position of central power, they had to prove that they and no one else were the "legitimized" successors of the legendary kingdom of old. The various demonstrations of proof originating from this wish formed the infrastructure of political identity.
The growth of centralization that emerged between the Akkadian and Old Babylonian periods led to a growth of written material. Writing was an important means of controlling goods and people, and as such it had a place in the society of the third millennium. Moreover, the kings of Akkad had left behind extensive written accounts of their conquests, which were collected and copied during the Old Babylonian period. From that time on writing was deployed as an effective instrument to centralize memory.
From the twenty-first century BC onwards, oral and written tradition functioned beside each other. What has been discussed in this book has been their separation from each other, the way in which an oral tradition developed into a fixed written tradition, and the continuation of a collective memory structure which was not dependent on the written word. In Assyriology, the methodological question of the relationship between the oral and the written has hardly been touched upon. A systematic study is needed to complement the recent discussions in anthropology and the history of religion. Here, the forms of collective memory pointed out in this book and their relationship with oral and written forms of transmission are summarized in brief.
The passing on of tradition and the formation of new collective memories after the twenty-first century BC passed through two different channels. One happened within a ritual, while the other was a new development of the scribal schools. The transfer that was formulated in from these scribal schools was bound up with the centre of power, for the scribal schools and then passed on by them were tools under the control of the ruler and reflected current conceptions of power. What was written, moreover, rested on coincidences or on the methods of teaching writing. The cultural memory which arose as a consequence had a cognitive character and a centralized structure. …
… The control of knowledge about the past, and with this the collective memory, was connected to the centre of power in the majority of these cult forms, but this control was not absolute. Some space remained for forms of memory other than those dictated by the centre of power.
[The] structure of collective memory of the third millennium was originally locally organized. The memory of previous generations was maintained through the countless votive offerings preserved in the temples. This system of communication functioned thanks to the existence of imagined intermediaries. It offered men and women, high ranking professions and artisans, rich and poor, the possibility of creating a place for themselves in the cultural memory of their own towns. However, with the increasing shift to writing, this local form of collective memory was ousted. Women in particular were deprived of the possibility of preserving their own identity. This phenomenon has not yet been systematically examined. But in all probability the various professional groups of women were able to link up with their own historic past through the cult of predecessors. Wherever possible, remarks have been made in this book documenting this.
There was an ever-diminishing number of opportunities to shape one's own identity, which was aggravated by the patrilineal memory structures introduced by the Amorites. In the first half of the second millennium, hereditary succession from father to son replaced the different roles of male and female predecessors. The result was that in the collective memory of smaller groups, especially in families, the names of their male members came to predominate. Both structures, advancing centralization and the particular form of hereditary succession, ensured that the memory of women who had fulfilled their role in the family and in society was permanently erased. Here too, the principle cut both ways. Whoever had no place in the past could make no contribution to the present.
The Source:
Gerdien Jonker, The Topography of Remembrance : the Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia, E.J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, 1995
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