The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria.

Feldman, Marian

The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria. By ZAINAB BAHRANI. Archaeology, Culture, and Society. Philadelphia: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS, 2003. Pp. x + 242, illus. $49.95.

In The Graven Image, Bahrani tackles the ambitious question of the essence, or what she calls the "ontology," of representational arts in Babylonia and Assyria. It is a book laden with ideas and insights, and a short review of this kind can only touch briefly upon some of these.

Arguing for "self-reflexivity"--a critical awareness of one's methodology and disciplinary history--Bahrani begins with three chapters that examine the concept of Mesopotamia and the placement of "Mesopotamian art history" within the trajectory of Western art history. She rightly brings attention to the development (and lingering effects) of Mesopotamian studies as a "hostile other" to the Classical and biblical traditions. In addition, she critiques the practice of art history for its purported reliance on ethnographic approaches and use of mimesis as a point of reference, which according to Bahrani, contribute to a colonialist discourse. One might wish for a more nuanced reading of these (and other disciplinary) classifications in the discussion, allowing more for the heterogeneity and spatio-temporal diversities within each, as Bohrer (2003) has recently done for the diverse nineteenth-century European reception of Mesopotamia along class and national lines.

Throughout the book, Bahrani argues for rejecting mimesis, which she defines as "close copy," as a basis for Assyro-Babylonian representation. Mimesis, a Greek word that Bahrani anchors to an art-historical tradition privileging Classical Greek art, is a slippery concept to define (e.g., see Stewart 1990: 73-85), and it threatens at several points itself to become a "hostile other" within the line of argumentation. Nonetheless, the awareness that a comprehensive, illusionistic imitation of perception was not the driving aspiration of Assyrian and Babylonian artistic production is an important contribution of the present study. However, moving beyond this begs fundamental questions regarding why the arts were created to look the way they do and why shifts in representational strategies occurred when and where they do.

Denying all mimetic function to representation, Bahrani precludes analysis of the motivations behind such shifts: for example, the introduction of "true profile" to depict the divine horned headdress during the period of Hammurabi, the use in Assurbanipal's reliefs of both multiple registers and the entire surface space (creating the so-called "worm's eye" and "bird's eye" perspectives), or the change from five- to four-legged doorway colossi in Sennacherib's palace. The book's visual analysis is curiously underplayed, with the artistic material placed secondary to the larger discourse. In several instances, objects or images are cursorily referenced in the text rather than integrated as contributing items of evidence with specific physical properties, for example, in the discussion of salmu, fig. 7 (referred to on p. 123), fig. 8 (p. 125), and fig. 10 (p. 140).

One of the most thought-provoking contributions is Bahrani's association of the cuneiform writing system with semiotic and postmodern theories of deferred and pluridimensional referentiality, which she then uses to support the multivalency of representation (chapter four). She argues for a similarity of representational structures in both the visual and verbal fields as well as for the constitutive effect of the interaction between the two, which she calls the "word-image dialectic." These claims might have been strengthened had they not assumed universal and atemporal dimensions. One wonders, for example, how far this argument can be extended beyond the highly controlled realms of court patronage, elite scribes, and court artists. Are all signs referencing all their possible meanings all the time, or are they constrained in certain ways by their context(s) and audience(s)? Would, for example, the same dialectic be at work in administrative or legal texts?

Likewise, chapter five, in which Bahrani calls for an understanding of the Akkadian word salmu as simulacrum (defined as a repetition that works through resemblance), provokes questions regarding the extent of the concept's applicability. How, for example, might we understand the use of this term in Assyrian inscriptions on non-representational stelae from the Stelenreihen at Assur that follow the format salmu RN or PN (Bonatz 2002: 18)? Do all images function the same way and contain the same efficacy ascribed to salmu? Just as language operates by constraining the meaning of any given word or sign through context and contingency, not all images were designated as salmu in the ancient Near East. Moreover, the use and meaning of the term salmu fluctuated, as has recently been discussed by Bonatz (2002) and earlier by Winter (1997). Of particular relevance to Bahrani's argument, Bonatz (2002: 11-16) contrasts salmu, which he considers to denote a constitutively cultic aspect of depiction, with the term tamsilu, which relates to reproductive and mimetic aspects (so also Winter 1997: 368-69). Such analyses raise the issue of whether we can ascribe a single "representational ontology" to all Assyro-Babylonian culture (whatever that may be), and if so, how this differs from earlier pursuits that sought a Mesopotamian Zeitgeist or Kunstwollen.

Bahrani is certainly right to highlight the power--the presencing--that imbued much Mesopotamian art, as many other scholars have also noted. In chapter six on the "killing" of royal images, however, Bahrani's adoption of Freud's notion of the uncanny, which results from a transgressive movement between reality and representation, seems at odds with her insistence elsewhere on erasing the boundary between the real and the representation and, indeed, the very unsuitability of these terms as analytic concepts for Mesopotamian art. The chapter further confuses the argument by blurring the distinction between those images that were mutilated (at Nineveh) and those that were carried off (to Susa), particularly since many of the monuments found at Susa were not only not effaced, but their association with an earlier Mesopotamian ruler was carefully preserved. For example, Shutruk-Nahunte inscribed directly onto Naram-Sin's stele, which he specifically attributes to Naram-Sin, his claim that he dedicated it in the temple of Inshushinak (suggesting that the Elamite king protected the stele and treated it in an exceptional manner, contra Bahrani, p. 164). This situation seems to be quite different from one in which imagery and/or inscriptions were multilated and left behind in their original palace context, though in both cases one can argue for a power inherent in the physical monument.

In chapter seven, Bahrani suggests an understanding of the symbol pedestal of Tukulti-Ninurta I according to a structure of chiasmus and presents an innovative reading of the piece as a representation about representation itself. She first argues that we should not lament the perceived incompatibility between the text on the pedestal's base (associated with Nusku) and the imagery (associated with Nabu through a reading of the depicted symbol as a stylus and tablet), because we should not approach the text as explaining the image. Yet it is quite difficult for us to escape this interpretive device, and Bahrani ultimately uses the inscription to explain the pedestal as a dedication to Nusku as a dream god, designating it a "magical religious object" associated with oneiromancy (p. 196). Bahrani supports this interpretation by shifting the iconographic connection of the stylus and tablet from Nabu to Nusku in his aspect as a dream god (p. 197), despite her prior stance against making one-to-one connections between symbols and gods (pp. 186, 193). Nevertheless, her identification of repetition in both the inscription (daily repeated prayers) and the imagery (Tukulti-Ninurta shown twice and the image of the altar that repeats the shape of the altar itself) offers a compelling structural symbiosis between the two elements of the monument. In addition, Bahrani's acknowledgement of the extremely self-conscious and self-referential nature of royal Assyrian art sets the stage for more sophisticated analyses.

The book's methodological approach is complex, rich with cross-disciplinary theory and consciously aware that scholarly narratives encode power structures. Nonetheless, at points the diverse lines of argument present contradictions. For example, Bahrani argues against using Louis Marin's scholarship on eighteenth-century French portraiture because of its inherent Christian aspects, then uses for her own purposes Foucault's study on Velazquez's Las Meninas, a work that carries equally heavy Christian overtones. Likewise, she discards cross-cultural comparisons with Egypt or Byzantium, claiming these are too different and anachronistic to justify comparison, but does draw analogies with modern Middle Eastern cultures. Parts of the "Western tradition" come under severe criticism (e.g., Kant), while others are freely employed (e.g., the Freudian psychoanalytical concepts of fetishism and the uncanny).

Chapters two and six are taken from earlier published articles, and their incorporation into a larger monographic narrative results in some repetitions (e.g., on text/image associations with Kantian theory, pp. 93 and 169) and contradictions (e.g., on p. 169, the translation given for salmu in one text is "statue" despite Bahrani's forceful argument against such a translation in the previous chapter).

At the outset, Bahrani states that her discussion is "sometimes polemical ... to be read as an antagonism" (p. 11), and this revolutionist rhetoric is apparent throughout the book. What tend to get glossed over in such manifestoes are the subtle trends of revision that are ongoing within different fields today. Indeed, it seems impossible to speak of a single, monolithically defined discipline of ancient Near Eastern studies, Assyriology, or art history. Reference to recent art-historical scholarship, such as Winter 1995 on aesthetics (e.g., on the cultural constructedness of aesthetics, pp. 75, 80), Kaim 2000 on the killing and dishonoring of royal statues (pertinent to the discussion of the defacement of images, pp. 149-84), or Russell 1993 on the complex but complementary relationship between text and image (relevant to the relationship of inscription to image on the Tukulti-Ninurta I pedestal, p. 190)--just to cite a few--would have provided a more nuanced and accurate account of the state of the field.

Bahrani has written a thought-provoking book, which, while some may disagree with its conclusions, poses important and timely questions of the material. Pushing beyond assumptions of absolute meaning (iconography) and one-to-one associations with ideology, Bahrani opens up the field of discourse for the study of ancient Near Eastern art and brings it into dialogue with current disciplinary trends toward critical reflexivity. Importantly, she argues not just for scholars of Assyrian and Babylonian art to adopt recent theories, but also for the contributions that this unique corpus can make to the development of new theories. It is hoped that the book will stimulate further discussion about the nature(s) of Babylonian and Assyrian representation across the disciplinary divides.

REFERENCES

Bohrer, Frederick N. 2003. Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Bonatz, Dominik. 2002. Was ist ein Bild im Alten Orient? Aspekte bildlicher Darstellung aus altorientalischer Sicht. In Bild, Macht, Geschichte: Visuelle Kommunikation im Alten Orient, ed. Marlies Heinz and Dominik Bonatz. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Pp. 9-20.

Kaim, Barbara. 2000. Killing and Dishonouring the Royal Statue in the Mesopotamian World. In Studi sul Vicino Oriente antico dedicati alla memoria di Luigi Cagni, ed. S. Graziani. Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale. Vol. 1, pp. 515-20.

Russell, John Malcolm. 1993. Sennacherib's Lachish Narratives. In Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed. P. J. Holliday. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Pp. 55-73.

Stewart, Andrew. 1990. Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

Winter, Irene. 1995. Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson. New York: Scribners. Pp. 2569-82.

______. 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, Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Pp. 359-81.

MARIAN FELDMAN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY