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Nineveh: Powerful City. Spider-Web City.

My paper will question the role and development of power in the city. Using the example of Nineveh and examining two objects that both display a narrative: an obelisk and a relief inside of Sennacherib's enormous palace, a program in Room VI. In discussing the narratives of these two monuments, and by understanding the ways in which they might have been understood (by their 'visibility' and by the mythology and lore that surround the stories they display), I will be able to approach the city as more than a shelter for the king, more than a capital to a vast emperor.

I see the city of Nineveh as a spider web, to which (from which) all roads lead; its spider being the head of power: the king. This metaphor also becomes revealing and complex when it is seen that the city itself is an interlocutor in the creation of power, a character in the story itself - indeed, the spider would not survive if it were not for his web. In this way, the idea of power in the city and in the brio of the king becomes both 'larger than itself' - myhologically and physically - but also an integral voice in the formulation of what can be understood as a tacit implication, something communally understood and recognized more than forcefully branded.

In addition to the following, very tentative, Bibliography, I might use some theorists like Spivak, Althusser, Jameson and Derrida.  I am also considering using quotes from a Nabokov interview, and/ or a book of Borges' Lectures.

Tentative Works Cited:

Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift; 2002. "Powerful cities" in Cities: reimagining the urban. Polity Press; Malden MA, 105-130.

Barbanes, Eleanor; 2003. “Planning an empire: city and settlement in the Neo-Assyrian period,” BCSMS 38: 15-22.

Bahrani, Zainab. The Graven Image Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Archaeology, Culture, and Society). New York: University of Pennsylvania, 2003. Print.

Foucault, Michel. "The Subject and Power." Ciritical Inquiry 8.4 (1982): 777-95. Print.

Guillermo, Algaze. "Habuba on the Tigris: Archaic Nineveh Reconsidered." Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45.2 (1986): 125-37. Print.

Kostof, Spiro; 1991.The city shaped: urban patterns and meanings through history. New York: Bulfinch Press, 1-41.

Lumsden, Stephen; 2005. "The production of space at Nineveh," in Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. D. Collon and A. George (eds). London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 187-197.

Marcus, Michelle I.; 1995. “Geography as visual ideology: Landscape, knowledge, and power in Neo-Assyrian art,” in Neo-Assyrian geography, M. Liverani (ed.), Roma: 193-202.

Mitchell, W.J. T. Landscape and power. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. Print.

Novak, Mirko; 2005. “From Ashur to Nineveh: The Assyrian town-planning programme” in Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Volume 1. London: British school of Archaeology in Iraq, 177-186.

Pittman, Holly; 1996. “The White Obelisk and the problem of historical narrative in the art of Assyria,” Art Bulletin 78: 334-355.

Russell, John M. "Bulls for the Palace and Order in the Empire: The Sculptural Program of Sennacherib's Court." The Art Bulletin 69.4 (1987): 520-39. Print.

Russell, John Malcolm. Sennacherib's palace without rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991. Print.

Van de Mieroop 2006, "Assyria’s world domination” 247-269.

Van de Mieroop 2006, “The rise of Assyria” 229-246.

Van De Mieroop, Marc. The Ancient Mesopotamian City. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.

Winter, Irene J.; 1997. "Art in empire: The royal image and the visual dimensions of Assyrian ideology," in Assyria 1995. Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Simo Parpola & R.M. Whiting (eds.). Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 359-381.

Winter, Irene J.; 1981. "Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs", Studies in Visual Communication 7: 2-38.