Reflections of Assyria and Assyrialogical Reflection

Though a comparatively young discipline, Assyriology is certainly at an age where it can examine its conception and early years in a critical, nuanced manner. Many of the readings with which we engaged in the past week detailed a history of Assyriology through various critical perspectives, from examining the Orientalizing features in European depictions of Assyria (Bohrer 1998) to the racial overtones of much of the German Assyriological scholarship that straddled the turn of the century and beyond (Frahm 2006). To me, some of the more fascinating fruits of these labors shed light upon the various popular ideas, prejudices,and social realities that influenced the discipline throughout space and time. Specifically, I am captivated by how and why the reception of the early archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia varied in France, England, and the United States, and how certain ideas influenced and continue to influence Assyriology to this very day.

The idea of a monolithic “Western” approach and reaction to the “Orient” is nowhere better dispelled than in the dialogue that took place between Assyria and France, England, and the United States through the middle and end of the 19^thcentury. Though France, England, and the United States were colonial powers that approached Assyria at roughly the same time, the primary structures by which each state interacted with the Assyrian excavations were quite different, yielding a nuanced picture of this once sprawling empire. The government of Louis-Phillippe directly sponsored the French excavation of the site of modern Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin) under Botta and the publication of findings thereof in Monument de Ninive (Bohrer1998; Diaz-Andreau 2007). On the other hand, Layard's excavations at modern Nimrud (Kalhu) were originally privately funded before British Museum support in 1846 (Diaz-Andreau 2007); similarly, Layard's accounts of his finds were privately published by John Murray III in various inexpensive, widely read, editions (Holloway 2006). Unlike its European counterparts, the United States had neither a consul in modern Iraq to support its larger imperial programs, nor an associated archaeological expedition therein at the time of the initial discoveries; instead, American protestant missionaries stationed in the Near East procured artifacts from Layard's excavation for various institutions (including many Universities) at home (Cohen &Kangas 2010; Holloway 2004).

These different modes of interaction combined with local cultural nuances and contingencies to produce varied societal responses to the newly discovered Assyria. In France, the lavish five volume Monument de Ninive was prohibitively expensive, as it simultaneously showcased the grandeur of Assyrian kingship and that of the French monarch. The price of the work discouraged the diffusion of the French discoveries, as did its association with Louis-Phillippe, who was deposed and executed before publication in 1849 and 1850 (Bohrer 1998). In England, on the other hand, Layard's inexpensive work appealed to the British masses through its ethnographically focused travel account and description of archaeological finds (Holloway 2004). This, combined with Mesopotamia's associations with both the Hebrew and Christian Bible, England's largely Protestant, biblically interested, public, and the accessibility of the artifacts at the British Museum aided the diffusion of the Assyrian finds across English social strata (Bohrer 1998). The protestant audience in the United States, even more so than in England, connected to the new Mesopotamian discoveries described in Layard's work through the Bible (Holloway 2004, 2006). Though American institutions possessed small collections of artifacts from the Nimrud excavations, the general public was more likely to find Mesopotamia through new editions of the Bible and religious literature than the artifacts themselves (Cohen & Kangas 2010; Holloway 2004, 2006).

Just as structural, societal, and ideological variations played a major role in the French, English, and American receptions of Assyria, so too did they affect the growth and direction of Assyriology as a discipline. Thus, Assyriology was largely used to understand the Bible before Delitzsch's pivotal Babel – Bibel lectures of 1902 –1904 due to the latter's privileged place in christian, especially protestant, societies (Frahm 2006; Holloway 2006). Delitzsch's pivitol lectures, which freed Assyriology from her biblical subservience, were themselves based on racist ideas that permeated Europe at this time (Diaz-Andreau 2007; Frahm 2006; Holloway 2006). Several scholars, including Delitzsch, divorced the Assyrians from their Semitic background by claiming that they were infused with superior Indo-Aryan blood. With the advent of the Nazi regime, rising racial ideas and European anti-semitism played out on the German Assyriological stage once again(Frahm 2006). Even a more modern strand in Assyriology that emphasizes the Mesopotamian foundations of many “Western” ideas and institutions may be connected to an en vogue idea or movement, that of globalization (Frahm 2006).

Quite clearly then, both the foundations of Assyriology and many of its most important movements can be connected to contemporary ideas, societal leanings, or influential systems. Though revealing largely because of the insulated nature of the modern field, it should come as no surprise to learn that Assyriology is as susceptible to the contemporary zeitgeist as any other discipline.

References

Diaz-Andreu,Margarita; 2007. “Biblical archaeology,” inA World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past.Oxford University Press, 131-166.
Bohrer, Frederick N.; 1998.“Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France,” Art Bulletin 80: 336-356.
Holloway, Steven W.; 2004.“Nineveh Sails for the New World: Assyria Envisioned by Nineteenth-Century America” Iraq 66: 243-256.
Holloway, Steven W.; 2006."Introduction: Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible” In Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible.S.W.Holloway (ed). Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1-41.
Frahm, Eckart; 2006.“Images of Assyria in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century western scholarship.”In Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible.S.W.Holloway (ed). Sheffield Phoenix Press, 74-94.
Cohen, Ada and Steven E. Kangas; 2010. “Our Nineveh Enterprise,” in Assyrian reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II: a cultural biography. A. Cohen and S.E. Kangas (eds.). Hanover: Hood Museum of Art and University Press of New England, 1-47.

Posted at Oct 02/2011 09:57PM:
omur: Fascinating paper Zack! Where do you think the German enterprise fits in this picture of the reception of Assyrian sculpture? Probably we need to have a closer look at the formation of Vorderasiatische Museum and the Pergamon Museum.