Losing One's Head in the Ancient Near East

Rita Dolce is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Near Eastern Cultures and Fine Arts at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy, and a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria, where she has excavated for 40 years at the site of Tell Mardikh-Ebla. Her research interests lie mainly in the figurative art, urban topography and architecture of the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia and Syria. She has written numerous books and articles focusing particularly on visual communication as the language of power and a means of dissemination in the societies of the Ancient Near East, and on the urban origins of Ebla, its palatial culture and the structure and significance of cult places in this important Early Syrian kingdom.

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Image Credits

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter I

I.1. From the Distant Past to the Recent Past

I.2. An Unrepeatable Act

I.3. The Headless Body: Anonymity/Identity

Chapter II

II.1. Exclusivity/Multiplicity

II.2. Exhibition/Quantification

Chapter III

III.1. What Happens to the "Coveted Object"?

III.2. Destinations/Motivations

III.3. Exhibition and Multivalence

Chapter IV

IV.1. Severed Heads and Birds of Prey

IV.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the Birds of Prey

IV.3. Mari and the Birds of Prey

IV.4. Sargon I of Akkad and the Birds of Prey

IV.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the Birds of Prey

IV.6. The Assyrians and the Birds of Prey

Chapter V

V.1. Moving Through Space and Time

V.2. How Does the Head Travel?

Chapter VI

VI.1. "Other" Decapitations in Times of War

VI.2. What Happens to the Severed Heads of Statues?

VI.3. Moving Through Space and Time

VI.4. Annihilation/Catharsis

Bibliography

Index