Though various studies, including C. Suter's, have attempted to interpret the Gudea statues and texts, there is still a need for an analysis of the significance of Gudea's self-portrayal as a builder and an architect in his texts and images. My final project will examine the role of the king as architect, and explore the ways in which he helps to construct and define space through temple building. I will also analyze the ideological and political functions of his projects and descriptions of them, though with a conscientious avoidance of reduction simply to power relations. An assertion that these objects and texts are mere propaganda tools is overly simplistic; I hope to focus on the actual influence of Gudea's monuments and works on the lived experience of the space in which they were built.
Bibliography:
Art of the first cities : the third millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, ed. Joan Aruz with Ronald Wallenfels.
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003).
Edzard, Dietz Otto, Gudea and his dynasty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
Suter, Claudia E, Gudea's temple building : the representation of an early Mesopotamian ruler in text and image.
Kubba, Shamil A. A, Mesopotamian architecture and town planning from the Mesolithic to the end of the Proto-historic Period c. 10,000-3,500 B.C (Oxford, England: B.A.R., 1987).
House most high : the temples of ancient Mesopotamia, ed. A.R. George (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1993).
Kraus, F. R., The role of temples from the third dynasty of Ur to the first dynasty of Babylon, trans. B. Foster (Malibu : Undena Publications, 1990).
Lundquist, John M., "The legitimizing role of the temple in the origin of the state," Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 21 (1982) 271-297.
Theory:
Winter, Irene J.; 1996. “Sex, rhetoric and the public monument: the alluring body of Naram-Sin of Agade” in Sexuality in Ancient Art, N.B.Kampen (ed.), Cambridge: 11-26.
Winter, Irene J.; 1989. “The body of the able ruler: Toward an understanding of the statues of Gudea” in DUMU-E2-DUB-BA-A: studies in honor of Åke W. Sjöberg, H. Behrens et al. (eds), Philadelphia: 573-583.
Lefebvre, Henri; 1991. “Spatial architectonics” in The production of space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 167-228.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “Structures, habitus, practices” in The logic of practice. Richard Nice (trans.). Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 52-65.
Texts, Images and the Architect.ppt